Sacramento River
Lower

After a few down years, the Lower Sac might be coming back to its former self. Luke recently had some good fishing and today, I had an excellent trip with my clients. It's fun to see healthy Lower Sac footballs readily coming to the net again. The weather was perfect and the river fished like we haven't seen in a few years. Welcome back Sac!

Spring means trout or does it? The Feather offers a shot at some valley steelhead spunky, hard fighting seafarers returning home. They're not monsters but they fight hard and made the same ocean journey as fish twice their size. Recent trips have been delivering good fishing which should improve through April and into May. Colin and Mike have been running walk and wade trips in the mountains and Mike has his Fall River boat ready to go. Luke and Kevin have been on the Lower Sac and report good fishing. Luke's always up for chasing bass on Lake Shasta and has had some solid days recently. Ben, Colin and I have all been on the Yuba which is fishing well despite the pipe burst earlier in the year. Everything is waking up and turning on. It's a good time to shake off the winter cold and hit the water.

I decided to take my dog Minnie for her first boat ride and check out the conditions on the Lower Sac. We went way down river to one of my favorite riffles. She seemed to like the ride but turned out to be an impatient fisherman. I caught a few nice smaller trout on a dry (dropper haha) and then broke out the bobber rod while we drifted down river to the takeout. The trout were pretty grabby and we caught some nice bigger fish. But then I hooked into something bigger that really gave me a tussle. If you've ever tried to drift fish by yourself while playing a fish and trying to control the boat, you know how difficult it can be. With visions of steelhead dancing in my brain I finally got the fish to the surface and it's a Sucker. Oh well. In any case, the flows are perfect and the weather has been great. It was 97 today. So far no signs of the crazy flow changes we've had the last few years so I'd say conditions are ideal and it's time to book a trip on the Lower Sac!